Emerson and Other Essays

by John Jay Chapman

The quality which every one will agree in conceding to Stevenson is lightness of touch. This quality is a result of his extreme lucidity, not only of thought, but of intention. We know what he means, and we are sure that we grasp his whole meaning at the first reading. Whether he be writing a tale of travel or humorous essay, a novel of adventure, a story of horror, a morality, or a fable; in whatever key he plays,—and he seems to have taken delight in showing mastery in many,—the reader feels safe in his hands, and knows that no false note will be struck. His work makes no demands upon the attention. It is food so thoroughly peptonized that it is digested as soon as swallowed and leaves us exhilarated rather than fed.

Writing was to him an art, and almost everything that he has written has a little the air of being a tour de force. Stevenson's books and essays were generally brilliant imitations of established things, done somewhat in the spirit of an expert in billiards. In short, Stevenson is the most extraordinary mimic that has ever appeared in literature.

That is the reason why he has been so much praised for his style. When we say of a new thing that it "has style," we mean that it is done as we have seen things done before. Bunyan, De Foe, or Charles Lamb were to their contemporaries men without style. The English, to this day, complain of Emerson that he has no style.

If a man writes as he talks, he will be thought to have no style, until people get used to him, for literature means what has been written. As soon as a writer is established, his manner of writing is adopted by the literary conscience of the times, and you may follow him and still have "style." You may to-day imitate George Meredith, and people, without knowing exactly why they do it, will concede you "style." Style means tradition.

When Stevenson, writing from Samoa in the agony of his South Seas (a book he could not write because he had no paradigm and original to copy from), says that he longs for a "moment of style," he means that he wishes there would come floating through his head a memory of some other man's way of writing to which he could modulate his sentences.

It is no secret that Stevenson in early life spent much time in imitating the styles of various authors, for he has himself described the manner in which he went to work to fit himself for his career as a writer. His boyish ambition led him to employ perfectly phenomenal diligence in cultivating a perfectly phenomenal talent for imitation.

There was probably no fault in Stevenson's theory as to how a man should learn to write, and as to the discipline he must undergo. Almost all the greatest artists have shown, in their early work, traces of their early masters. These they outgrow. "For as this temple waxes, the inward service of the mind and soul grows wide withal;" and an author's own style breaks through the coverings of his education, as a hyacinth breaks from the bulb. It is noticeable, too, that the early and imitative work of great men generally belongs to a particular school to which their maturity bears a logical relation. They do not cruise about in search of a style or vehicle, trying all and picking up hints here and there, but they fall incidentally and genuinely under influences which move them and afterwards qualify their original work.

With Stevenson it was different; for he went in search of a style as Coelebs in search of a wife. He was an eclectic by nature. He became a remarkable, if not a unique phenomenon,—for he never grew up. Whether or not there was some obscure connection between his bodily troubles and the arrest of his intellectual development, it is certain that Stevenson remained a boy till the day of his death.

The boy was the creature in the universe whom Stevenson best understood. Let us remember how a boy feels about art, and why he feels so. The intellect is developed in the child with such astonishing rapidity that long before physical maturity its head is filled with ten thousand things learned from books and not drawn directly from real life.

The form and setting in which the boy learns of matters sticks in the mind as a part of the matters themselves. He cannot disentangle what is conventional from what is original, because he has not yet a first-hand acquaintance with life by which to interpret.